


Every Right Thing Will Find its Right Place

by fortissimi



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Feel-good, M/M, One Shot, just a short thing about fitting in because i'm totally not projecting, zimbits - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 03:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13802202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortissimi/pseuds/fortissimi
Summary: Eric Bittle finally finds where he belongs.





	Every Right Thing Will Find its Right Place

Eric Bittle has always held on to those few words his mama had told him when he felt lost. Words that gave him a shining speck of hope when he was shrouded by darkness.

Those words had pulled him through when the other children had started to turn on him. Growing up and into their parents prejudices, Eric was a deviation from what a normal kid should be. Too scrawny, too gentle, and too young to understand the venom laced words his peers threw at him to insult his feminine nature, he felt his isolation eating away at him from the inside, leaving him hollow. He could cry until he was empty, but he couldn’t change himself. He would sit alone in his room, night after night, wearing the darkness around him like a blanket, wishing desperately for a friend, for somewhere to fit in. Where he wouldn’t feel wrong.

She unknowingly saved him again the night the football team had forced him into a utility closet and locked the door behind him, laughing mercilessly at his helpless pleas which drowned between his own sobs. He screamed until his voice choked in his tears, his body thrashing like a wild animal in blind panic as he heard the group’s footsteps grow softer, knowing fully that they intended to leave him there all night. His outbursts settled into a soft whimpering as he pulled his body as close together as he could, making himself as small as possible as though the surrounding darkness were a predator that he couldn’t escape from. Rocking himself softly, he repeated her words to himself like a mantra, a shield that would keep him safe through the night, until the next morning when a cleaning lady found him tear-stained and asleep in a dim and dusty corner, clutching a hockey stick as if it were his only lifeline.

He was 15 the next time he found himself falling back on his mother’s wisdom. Despite his father’s best efforts, and the no-checking rule of his newfound junior hockey team, he couldn’t stop the other boys’ violence towards him. Even out on the ice, the only place he had ever felt free, he suddenly felt alienated by the far more masculine boys he had always been afraid of. It was then that he found himself caught in the mischievous glare of an older, much taller boy. Eric knew that look well. It was the same sneer held to perfection by his childhood tormentors. He stood rigid, a deer in headlights, as the burly young boy came barrelling at him, with the lethal grin of a tiger lunging at its prey. Something twisted in his gut, and before the hit even registered, he felt his legs disappear into thin air like a gas. A few brisk moments where time stops, and he felt nothing but a faint buzz of cold on his numb cheek, a whistle blowing from what sounded like a far-off land, and his own swimming thoughts as darkness attacked the edges of his vision. As he gave in to the shadows of unconsciousness, he remembered again what his mother told him, and he knew that he would be okay.

Suzanne’s words could still reach him all the way at Samwell University, and that thought only barely registered in his mind as he hugged his pillow tightly to his chest in his dorm room, the light of his room painting his reflection on the window against the dark of the world outside. After meeting his new team for the first time, and finding them to be the same type of brawny athletes that had caused him anguish for so long, he wasn’t sure that that promise she had made to him all those years ago would ever come true. They had destroyed his gift of a pie, his passion for baking being so much a part of himself that he couldn’t help but feel like they had alienated him all over again. Even the captain seemed to regard him with distain. He wiped his salty tears on his blanket and turned out the light, silently and bitterly resigning himself to being the puzzle piece that doesn’t fit for yet another year.

Eric – _Bitty_ – is almost 22. It’s been years since the words that had once been his only support had even crossed his mind. The golden morning light streams through the kitchen window of his boyfriend’s apartment, warming his face as he navigates barefoot across the tiled floor, the Falconers’ sweater he’s taken from Jack’s closet gentle on his skin. He hums softly as he flips the breakfast pancakes he’s crafting, the soft scent filling the small room with a sense of home. He’s not sure what triggers the memory of his mama’s voice, but all at once the spatula slips from his grasp with a clatter, and his eyes are full of hot tears. Without a moment to spare, the taller boy is at his side, hair still messed with sleep, and a firm arm is around his shoulders.

“Bud... what happened? What’s wrong?” comes his softly concerned voice.

Bitty turns to stare at the man who holds him close. He takes in the way the light dances through his messy black locks, the fast but steady pulse of his breaths, and the concern in his sleep-heavy blue eyes; and in the blink of an eye, everything makes sense. Smiling into the hand that wipes away his tears, he knows where he belongs, and for the last time, looks back on his mother’s promise, knowing that her words have finally come true.

 

_“In due time, every right thing will find its right place.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little feel-good fic I wrote to cheer myself up and give myself a little hope.  
> Title is based on the song "Everything Changes" from Waitress.


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